


Leap in the Dark

by redperil



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Cold War, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:37:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14216325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redperil/pseuds/redperil
Summary: With Gaby out of commission, Napoleon is sent on his first mission alone with Kuryakin. In their line of work, a partner might be the only person in the world to be trusted, and even then, perhaps not. Napoleon is fairly certain where Kuryakin stands on the trustable line, so his only good chance at surviving is a clean mission without trouble. Even thinking those words make him laugh.





	Leap in the Dark

The mission is simple enough, if that could ever be said about espionage. It helped that the mark lived in a literal castle—the old stone bricks were easier to scale than a rock wall. They were supposed to just listen to the conversation from the window. A golden triangle drug kingpin was supposedly playing host to a member of Parliament, and U.N.C.L.E. needed confirmation before informing MI6. 

Up the wall, down the wall. A mission that was too simple, really, to have been assigned to them normally, but they were technically following up on the last incident. With her gone, Kuryakin outright refused the food he cooked for them and spent the hours leading up to the mission glowering at the wall. They would get close and then get lost; no need for anything remotely resembling a partnership. Kuryakin was about as liable to shoot Napoleon as the drug lord. He isn't sure whether he's more offended by Kuryakin thinking he'd poison a perfectly good omelet or by the fact that simply being left alone with Napoleon for a few days is enough to send him in a magnificently bad mood. Napoleon happens to be delightful company. Unfortunately, he also happens to be an American.

Napoleon isn't sure whether he's more offended by Kuryakin thinking he'd poison a perfectly good omelet or by the fact that simply being left alone with Napoleon for a few days is enough to send him in a magnificently bad mood. Napoleon happens to be delightful company, thank you very much.

It's a bit of an unspoken contest to see who could scale the wall faster; Kuryakin wins and Napoleon isn't surprised in the slightest, though he pulls himself to the window a few seconds later. Inside, the door to the study creaks open and sounds of greeting can be heard. Then a bullet ricochets several inches from Napoleon's right hand. 

He makes eye contact with Kuryakin for a moment before they're both scaling the wall like mad, the sound of bullets hitting stone chasing them. It's not a race anymore but the Russian is still faster, freak of nature that he is. Napoleon is several meters behind him when he disappears over the ledge. Below, the guards are yelling out commands, the frequency of gunshots increasing as more pour onto the lawn. He's about to reach for the ledge himself when a bullet grazes his forearm. 

"Fuck," he says, mostly to pull himself together and keep climbing. His hand is literally on the goddamn ledge when a guard gets lucky and catches him in the leg and the pain makes his grip loosen. Stone burns against his skin like sandpaper as he scrabbles, looses his foothold, starts to fall. And then something has clamped around his wrist like a vice.

Napoleon looks up, half expecting it to be a guard. But it's not, it's Kuryakin—of course it's Kuryakin. The Russian has him dangling by an arm and is staring rather angrily at where their hands meet. For a terrifying, breathless moment Napoleon thinks he might let go, or fly into a rage, or both, but then he's being hauled over the edge.

He's being pat down immediately, hands on either side of his torso beneath his jacket, as if being shot and almost falling off a wall weren't disorienting enough for one night. 

"Peril, what are you—"

The Russian leans back, apparently satisfied. "You are not shot?"

"You were checking for _gunshots?_ " 

"You have any?" 

"Just grazed my leg and arm. It's fine." Napoleon says quickly, as the Russian's expression shifts violently. It's sort of touching, in an extremely strange and mildly scary way. "Could have just asked."

"No," Kuryakin says, with little explanation. He's getting up and scanning the castle's rooftop, and Napoleon remembers that they're still sort of fucked. "A lake on this end. Can you jump and swim?" 

"Yes." Napoleon says, standing, and his leg says _nope._ He hobbles over to the side of the castle that sits on the lakeside; it's a few meters till the water should be deep enough to safely jump into. He stares at the short stretch of lawn between the wall and the lake and imagines his flattened corpse on it. "Maybe no."

Kuryakin has the nerve to glare at him. "Is only way out." 

"I know that." Napoleon shoots back. He looks at the lake again and then tries putting weight on his shot leg. It gives out almost immediately, and Napoleon has to steady himself against the ledge. Guards are crawling all over the lawn now. It's only a matter of time before they come busting onto the rooftop. "Give me your extra rounds."

"Excuse me?"

"I'll draw them to the other side so you can make the jump. Someone needs to tell Waverly about Parliament's lucrative drug cartel."

"And you will do what?" Kuryakin asks, though they both know the answer. 

Napoleon looks at him, arm outstretched. He tries to ignore the dripping blood. "Give me the rounds. I can hold up till Waverly sends the cavalry." _Or till I'm dead._ "Did you sneak a bug onto me again?"

The Russian looks away. "Bottom lining of jacket."

"Okay, so you'll know what's going on. Maybe they'll even give up more information." 

Kuryakin looks like he wants to argue, or maybe he's just angry again, but they both know the options are limited. He hands over the extra rounds and Napoleon limps to the far wall, starts shooting down. A hail of bullets come his way in response. The lake side is clear in moments as the guards run toward the gunfire. 

Napoleon pauses to reload. "Hey, could you tell Gaby—" he turns his head and stops. Kuryakin has already jumped. 

 

Napoleon knows he hasn't been left for dead, as much as it feels that way. This was his idea, after all. The best course of action. Still, he would have felt better if Kuryakin hadn't just disappeared on him. Not even a "Good luck, Cowboy." 

He's coming back for Napoleon. Probably. Or in the very least, he's called Waverly and U.N.C.L.E. is sending an extraction team. Napoleon is enough of an asset to warrant that.

In the back of Napoleon's mind, he wonders if Kuryakin might not call Waverly. If Napoleon died here, chained up in a literal dungeon, no one would be surprised. And Kuryakin would be out of his partnership with an enemy agent.

Napoleon shuts those thoughts down as best he can. The Russian might not trust him, might really dislike him, but he'd saved Napoleon from Rudi back when they'd barely even known each other. And right now, he really needed to believe someone was coming. 

The torture is pretty routine. Napoleon is chained to the ceiling so he's standing on his toes, strung like a punching bag. They want to know who he works for, what he wants, who he is. He keeps the cries in until he's too tired to keep it up, but that's okay. Soon he's too tired to make much noise even if he wanted to. The steady drip of his blood on the cell floor is strangely calming after they leave him, promising worse in the morning. His jacket lies discarded in the corner from when they'd ripped it off him. 

"Still alive." he says quietly, though his voice is more of a rasp at this point. "If you're listening. Night, Peril."

 

Napoleon is woken rather rudely by cold metal pressing against his face, the flat blade of a knife. His body runs cold and the guard must sense his fear begins he's grinning, running the edge down Napoleon's jaw, drawing a thin line across his neck. A little deeper, and he'd be bleeding out.

He doesn't like knives. He can stay calm when it's just fists, just demands and punches, but knives are more permanent. And the people that wield them in these situations tend to like having some fun.

"Boss wants answers," the guard says. He's tearing through Napoleon's tailored dress shirt, carving erratic lines into his chest. Napoleon doesn't want to cry out and give him the satisfaction, but he's tired and the guard seems to be trying his hardest to get what he wants. 

Hopefully Kuryakin stopped listening a while ago. It's somehow worse to think about the Russian hearing any of this, hearing his vulnerability and pain, his weakness. 

It's rather sad, he thinks, to die at the hands of this mediocre knife fanatic. He'd much rather it be a shoot out, a bomb—something sudden. At least he knows he's not going to give up anything.

The guard keeps working at it, only drawing the occasional involuntary groan. He's never going to hear the words his boss wants. At this rate, his torso probably looks like a cutting board. Napoleon almost wishes he'd give up and slit his throat already. He hates hovering in this limbo of terror and pain, waiting for the knife to bite, knowing he is completely helpless to stop it.

The blade still mid cut, guard raising his head at the sound. Napoleon hears it too. The popping of a silenced pistol, yelling that quickly stops with a few more shots. They're growing closer.

Napoleon knows how it's going to go down, almost rolls his eyes when the guard steps behind him fearfully, wrenches Napoleon's head back and holds the knife to his exposed throat. Honestly such a cliché way to die. 

At least he was wrong about Kuryakin. 

When the Russian bursts into the room, the guard says, "Guns down or your friend—"

A silenced shot. The guard's grip on his hair loosens, knife jerking against his throat before it clatters to the floor along with its owner. Napoleon looks everywhere and sees red, on the guard’s forehead, on Kuryakin’s enraged face, and then down on his body, running down his chest and dripping to the floor. He can’t remember what color his shirt originally was. 

His arms burn as Kuryakin lifts him with _one arm_ and shoots through the chains holding him up. Napoleon collapses none too gracefully into him, wondering briefly if blood could be washed from leather. He’s gently lowered to the ground till he’s staring up from the floor at Kuryakin’s face, his eyes wide in an expression Napoleon hasn’t seen on him before. He’d call it horror for anyone else. 

“What?” he croaks. Kuryakin doesn’t reply. He’s shuffling through a tin box he’s brought along like a madman before finding some gauze. He lifts Napoleon’s head up without warning and wraps the gauze around so tightly it could have been an attempt at strangulation. Not that it would really matter; the black haze in his vision says as much. How much could you really do for a slit throat?

“Hey... hey, Peril.” he rasps, weakly swatting at the other man’s leg to get his attention. “Tell Gaby she was a good partner. You too.” 

Kuryakin’s face twists like he’s trying to comprehend what he means, and then settles back to anger. “Shut up.” he tells Napoleon, which aren’t exactly poetic parting words. Napoleon turns his head to the side with some effort to watch what he’s doing and quickly becomes alarmed; the Russian has a syringe out and is prepping his arm. 

“I... don’t think you should—“

“O negative. Shut up. You want to die here?” 

Napoleon can hardly keep his eyes open, let alone think of a good retort. Of course he doesn’t want to die here. But he’d rather do that than have them both die, caught by the rest of security while Kuryakin’s doing a goddamn field blood transfusion. 

“Hey, Cowboy, awake!” Kuryakin’s unnaturally large hand lightly slaps Napoleon in the face. At least, it had probably been meant to be light. He blinks groggily and groans, distantly aware of his arm being swiped with alcohol, the prick of a needle.

It’s for the best that he’s barely lucid, Napoleon decides, as Kuryakin begins to carefully unbutton Napoleon’s bloodied shirt with his right hand while keeping his left arm elevated, blood slowly flowing. 

“Guards?” Napoleon whispers. It doesn’t seem like Kuryakin is in any rush. 

“Dead.” Kuryakin says. It seems unecessary to ask anything further, and Napoleon doesn’t have the energy to. The silence is broken by the faintest crackle and then Gaby’s indiscernible voice from the earpiece. “Alive.” Kuryakin replies. “Stabilizing on-site.” A pause. “Cannot move him yet.” 

Napoleon would usually argue, for his pride, except he knows the only way he’s leaving here at the moment is through being carried by Kuryakin, and he’d rather get towed away in a body bag.

He loses what little grasp on time he has quickly. At first it is easy to stay awake as Kuryakin carefully cleans and bandages the cuts on his chest with on hand. But then there is just a silence that would have been unbearably awkward if he weren’t half unconscious, 

After what could have easily been a few hours, Napoleon feels Kuryakin’s fingers look for his pulse. Without removing the IV, or much of any warning, Kuryakin shifts to stand and takes Napoleon with him. 

“You... really need to stop doing this.” Napoleon manages, ignoring the fact that he’s already resting his head on the Russian’s ridiculously broad shoulder. 

“Could say same for you.” Kuryakin grumbles. Napoleon closes his eyes, resolutely _not_ thinking about how the timbre of his voice resonates through his chest, or how he feels safer than he has in years, half dead in the arms of a Soviet spy.


End file.
